August 19, 2013

Now for some years there has been the suggestion creeping into the church world that when you get in darkness with no light you must have done something wrong. The suggestion is that if you are in this kind of circumstance, it must mean that you are out of God’s will. It seems like there is a parade of testimonials from people who are forever telling us that when they gave their heart and life to God, everything turned rosy; that when they got into the center of God’s will and quit resisting God, everything turned bright. I am one preacher who says there is a little too much illusionary Christianity being propagated today. This parade creates a momentum: when one says it, another one wants to say it; and that sends out a rosy glow, making people who have not yet moved into the stream of Christianity think that the minute they make that walk down an aisle and give their life to God everything is automatically right thereafter. Not so!

I find Christians all over the world forever being intimidated by that “accuser of the brethren” who says that when things go wrong, “You are out of God’s will.” They are wrong and bad enough in themselves, but he just adds on more weight: “It is happening to you because you did something wrong.” Not so! This kind of circumstance is not happening to you because you did something wrong. To those Christians who have said to me that the sign of being out of God’s will is things going wrong circumstantially in your life, I have oft responded: then all the saints in God’s book were out of God’s will most of the time! The Christian journey is warfare.